iPhone Nano Rumors Officially Dead

Submitted by Thomas Estilow on January 26, 2009 - 12:01pm

Much speculation has surrounded the prospect of a smaller, simpler version of the iPhone dubbed the "nano" in recent months. Lately reports have centered on the possibility of an iPhone Nano in development for China, and the existence on some case maker's sites of "nano" size iPhone products.

These rumors were tamped down in October during Apple's quarterly conference call with Steve Jobs, when he laid out Apple's strategy in the mobile phone market. Jobs was quoted saying, "I think that the traditional game in the phone market has been to produce a voice phone in a hundred different varieties, but as software starts to become the differentiating technology of this product category, I think that people are going to find that a hundred variations presented to a software developer is not very enticing."

"Babe Ruth only had one home run, he just kept hitting it over and over again." Regardless of Jobs' comments, this did not stop the rumor mill. Artist's renderings of what a nano version might look like and speculation on what countries the new device might appear in has continued.

The latest quarterly call featured Apple COO Tim Cook, who took even more wind out of the sails of the iPhone Nano myth. Cook stated, "You know us, we're not going to play in the low-end voice phone business. That's not who we are. That's not why we're here. We'll let somebody do that. Our goal is not to be the unit share leader in the phone industry, it is to build the best phone." Further comments explained Apple's goal of evaluating each individual market in 70 countries and determining how to best compete.

With this news it's time to officially pronounce the iPhone Nano rumor dead.